Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion: A Comprehensive Resource for Identifying North American Birds.

PETE DUNNE'S ESSENTIAL FIELD GUIDE COMPANION: A Comprehensive Resource for Identifying North American Birds PETE DUNNE

Packed with details to aid in the identification of hundreds of North American birds, this book is not a field guide per se. Oversize and text heavy, it's intended as a reference by serious birders. Instead of illustrations, the guide "companion" provides extensive descriptions that emphasize birds' overall features, habitats, behavioral traits, and differences. A typical field guide focuses much more on specific body parts and plumage than Dunne's book does. Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey and author of many books for bird-watchers, Dunne encourages his readers to narrow their focus and to concentrate on the birds that live near them. In each species account, he first details that bird's range, habitat, cohabitants, and movement and migration. Then, he describes the size and shape of the bird and its plumage, behavior, flight styles, vocalizations, and other important traits. Houghton Mifflin, 2006, 710 p., hardcover, $29.95.